Balance & Orientation: A Leadership Reflection
There’s been a lot written and spoken about Balance of late: work-life, task-relationship, and action-reflection. Much of this advice when put into practice can be helpful.
Personally, I know Balance as a key principle to build resilience – the ability to go the journey, enduring times when the travelling is far from easy. Balance for me is not something binary; life’s just not that neat and simple. I can’t just add a bit of ‘this’ and expect all be well and in sync.
Why not see balance as a dance?
There are swings and spins, tempo changes, other dancers on the floor, and an element of practice! It can be easy to get distracted with so much going on around you; it takes dedicated awareness and intention to stick to the rhythm of your own beat.
Well, businesses have their own rhythms too.
A lot of the time it can feel all peaks and troughs – at speed! And with the constant lurching from one extreme to the other, stress and tension builds as a natural reaction to feeling off-centre and on edge.
Stress and tension significantly influence our decision-making for the dance ahead. It can feel safer to slow down and restrict movement (become rigid and reactive in yourself or as a business), rather than maintain an open and creative approach. But this mindset can sometimes do more harm than good, giving a false sense of security that comes at the cost of becoming ‘stuck’.
For some of my clients, intuition lets them know they are heading down this path.
They ask me: "How can I keep my focus and not get lost?"
They ask me: "How can I keep my focus and not get lost?"
Let me bring it back to music.
The rhythm of business (the peaks and troughs) is the song to which we all must dance. The undulation is the beating heart of change and growth – essential elements in a successful business lifecycle. When we learn to accept its natural rhythm, and stop fighting, we open ourselves to new perspectives.
We can move from a rigid idea of Balance, to a dynamic one that can exist no matter where the music takes us. All we need to do to engage this new perspective is to draw on our ability to orientate.
Orientation, or the alignment and positioning of oneself, in dance makes intuitive sense. We use our physical senses to scout the path ahead and prepare our muscles for the next sequence. It allows us to move with precision and intention, flowing from one form to another with Balance intact.
How we orient ourselves in business and leadership is just as powerful.
The questions below can become our Orientation tools, a sequence of moves we can rely on to carry us through the beat of our business’ rhythms. A dance we can master to keep our Balance in flow.
Why are we on this journey?
Where are we headed?
How will we travel together?
Where and how will I invest my time and energy?
How well am I listening to what's happening around me?
When am I taking time to step back and reflect?
